Your Views

Re: The letter "Local and area residents lend support to all stars" (A-J, Aug. 21).

It's great to see our friends from Lamesa (and other surrounding communities, I'm sure) supporting Western Little League's efforts in the Little League World Series.

We West Texas folks need to stick together and rally around these talented, classy kids who represent our area so well.

If only the letter writer from Lamesa demonstrated that same class, instead of the callousness he displayed in his comments directed at the children of Lubbock's underprivileged! His poorly chosen words demonstrate a brazen disregard for what is a very real problem in Lubbock and many other communities.

As a Little League volunteer, I can assure our friend from Lamesa that many families don't even bother to sign their kids up for baseball because they believe that they can't afford it.

Many volunteers from our league have spent hours on the phone with these parents, working out payment plans, helping line up scholarships for kids to play, and committing to do whatever is necessary to ensure that no child is denied the opportunity to play baseball. Many others have donated time and money to raise private funds toward the same goal.

Our Western All-Stars are living out their dreams in Williamsport. For those who gave so generously to the Western All-Stars, I encourage you to consider how you can help the kids in our community who need your support the most. They have dreams, too.

PHIL RICHARDSON/Lubbock

Funds spent on drug war should be better utilized

The annual cost of the drug war is an estimated $50 billion. Much of that money which could have been used to train specialized teachers to conduct drug-awareness programs in our public schools has been instead spent paying farmers in Colombia not to grow coca and farmers in Afghanistan not to grow poppies.

Meth labs spring up faster than the police can find them and troubled kids would just sniff glue or paint if they did.

Instead of emergency room personnel describing victims and explaining to kids the possible deadly effects of introducing foreign substances into the brain or detailing the severe lifelong penalties of an addiction, the kids get an assistant DA telling them that the penalty for drug-use is two to 10 in the slammer.

Probably more Americans are less adversely affected by drug-use itself than the ridiculous way in which it has been handled; our prisons are swollen with addicts and drug-related felons and our police/community relations have soured from the midnight raids into bedrooms. Many city ghettos today are telling their citizens "not to squeal," which means that the police are now considered "enemies" by the very people they are sworn to serve and protect.

Drug use is and always has been an attitudinal and mental health problem. Until larceny, public-endangerment or assault was committed, the job should not have been given to law enforcement in the first place.